One common manner of accessing payment accounts is by presenting a payment card at a point of sale in a retail store. On such occasions, payment credential information such as a payment account number (e.g., a PAN or “primary account number”) or a proxy for such as number (e.g., a payment token), and related information, may be read from the payment card by a POS terminal
It has been proposed that mobile devices such as smartphones be used at the point of sale in lieu of a conventional payment card. For such purposes, mobile devices may be equipped with appropriate hardware features, such as circuitry for short-range radio data communications with the POS terminal or a reader component thereof. In addition, to enable the mobile device to function as a payment device, one or more payment application programs (“apps”) and one or more sets of payment credentials may be provisioned to the mobile device.
According to other proposals, payment credentials may be used for remote payments and may reside on a server. In addition or alternatively, payment details may be tokenized by using card-on-file tokens. In addition or alternatively, payment credentials for use by payment-enabled mobile devices may be stored in a remote server and made available for a transaction at the point of sale initiated by the payment-enabled mobile device.
The present inventors have now recognized opportunities to enhance the decision-making process that may be undertaken when a request is received to provision payment credentials to a mobile device.